By Cam Lucadou-Wells
The “principal employee” of a flourishing heroin-trafficking business in Greater Dandenong has avoided jail.
Theodoros Ispoglou pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court to trafficking as part of the phone-order enterprise that sold 807 grams of heroin in Dandenong, Noble Park and Keysborough in late 2018-early 2019.
Ispolglou was involved in more than half of the operation’s 519 drug deals – 270 deals involving 347 grams of heroin.
The “significant” enterprise worked by customers ordering drugs over the phone.
The heroin would then be personally delivered to homes or for pick-up outside tennis courts, hospitals, shopping centres and fast food outlets.
Some of the sales however were to undercover police operatives.
The ‘boss’ Harry Piperias – who was jailed for up to six years for his role – often paid Ispoglou and other ‘employees’ with heroin.
Ispoglou was clearly a heavily-using addict at the time, sentencing judge Gerard Mullaly said on 17 May.
He’d been clean for eight years until he met an old acquaintance while collecting methadone in Dandenong in 2019, according to a defence submission.
He “succumbed” to using heroin with the acquaintance, who then introduced him to work for Piperias.
At the time, Ispoglou had lost legitimate work as a courier. He’d been unable to drive after collapsing at work with a type-2 diabetic attack.
“But for the intervention of the diabetic collapse and loss of work, you may have continued along that pathway and not come across Mr Piperias at all,” Judge Mullaly said.
After Piperias’s arrest, Ispoglou stopped using heroin and went on a medically-authorised methadone regime.
He had remained heroin-free and rehabilitated while on bail for the past three years.
It showed his ability to “reform”, put his family and health to the fore and not to return to the “whirlwind of drug use”.
His drug and dishonesty offences, including jail terms and failed attempts at rehabilitative sentences, date between 1998-2010.
In this case, prosecutors pressed for another jail term, given the gravity and perniciousness of the crime.
Judge Mullaly said Ispoglou would ordinarily be facing years in prison, but was not an “entrepreneurial” drug trafficker like Piperias.
A community corrections order (CCO) could achieve the “benefits” of both punishment and rehabilitation, as well as keeping Ispoglou’s family together.
He also noted Ispoglou’s ill health, the unnecessary delay caused by an inexperienced defence lawyer and his steps to reform while on bail.
Ispoglou was convicted with a three-year supervised CCO, including 250 hours of unpaid work, as well as mental health and drug treatment.
